On his book The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized
Cover Interview of December 04, 2011
In a nutshell
Many secular humanists are attracted to Buddhism because there is no creator God and thus it seems “spiritual but not religious.” In addition, there is much hype about the good effects of Buddhist meditation on mood, health, and well-being. I set myself the task of asking first, whether the beliefs of classical Buddhism, karma, rebirth, and immaterialism about mind are optional. Could one be a Buddhist if one subtracts the beliefs in karma and rebirth? Second, I asked whether there is in fact any good evidence about the claims that Buddhists are happier than most other people, Catholics, atheists, Confucians.
The first half of the book is devoted to the question of whether and how one might study happiness. Is happiness something in-the-head that can be assessed by fMRI? Does Buddhism promise happiness? If so, what kind? The second half of the book takes up the question of what Buddhism would look like if one subtracted the hocus pocus about karma and rebirth. Can there be such a thing? This is “Buddhism Naturalized.”
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
In a nutshell
Many secular humanists are attracted to Buddhism because there is no creator God and thus it seems “spiritual but not religious.” In addition, there is much hype about the good effects of Buddhist meditation on mood, health, and well-being. I set myself the task of asking first, whether the beliefs of classical Buddhism, karma, rebirth, and immaterialism about mind are optional. Could one be a Buddhist if one subtracts the beliefs in karma and rebirth? Second, I asked whether there is in fact any good evidence about the claims that Buddhists are happier than most other people, Catholics, atheists, Confucians.
The first half of the book is devoted to the question of whether and how one might study happiness. Is happiness something in-the-head that can be assessed by fMRI? Does Buddhism promise happiness? If so, what kind? The second half of the book takes up the question of what Buddhism would look like if one subtracted the hocus pocus about karma and rebirth. Can there be such a thing? This is “Buddhism Naturalized.”